6. NWANiggaz4Life

Niggaz4Life is just… both the De La Soul albums had a cinematic quality to them, you can see those songs. With that being said, [on this album] Dr Dre had this sonic brilliance and pristine gangster music that just sounded brilliant. And it was orchestrated and sequenced very brilliantly, too. It seems like an awful lot of thought went into it. To me, it wasn’t Gangsta with an ‘a’, it was Gangster with an ‘er’ – with a suit and tie. This is the business gangster; this isn’t hold your gun sideways, this is Scorcese. Ice Cube not being there for this album was part of the appeal; everyone wanted to know what they’d be able to achieve without him. And it’s a triumph.